BloggeRhythms

A few items today makes one wonder why people are so often surprised when the blatantly obvious actually happens.  

Chris Woodyard titled his column @usatoday.com: “Study: Self-driving cars have higher accident rate." 

“Even though they haven't been at fault, self-driving test cars are involved in crashes at five times the rate of conventional cars, a new study finds.

“Even when the figures are adjusted to take into account that many accidents involving conventional cars go unreported, the study from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that the rate is still twice as high.

“As a result, the total number of self-driving car accidents being used for comparison is the study is minuscule, 11. But that's five times the rate of the accident rate in conventional cars, and there's four times the injury rate, the study finds. The injuries, however, have all been minor.”

In this case, with countless numbers of more drivers on the road every day, many of them texting, speeding, racing, recklessly crossing lanes, tailgating or conversing on the phone, what would anyone expect to happen to a car moving in traffic that didn’t have a driver in it? 

On another issue, Louis Doré @independent.co.uk reports that: “The world’s richest man, Bill Gates, has said that the private sector is too selfish and inefficient to produce effective energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

“While announcing his plan to spend $2 billion of his own wealth on green energy during an interview with The Atlantic, the Microsoft founder called on fellow billionaires to help make the US fossil-free by 2050 with similar philanthropy.

“The climate problem has to be solved in the rich countries. China and the US and Europe have to solve CO2 emissions, and when they do, hopefully they’ll make it cheap enough for everyone else.”

While Bill Gates interest in climate change is odd, whereas he’s obviously an extremely bright individual and should know better than to believe the global-warming farce, here are some statistics about his charitable contributions: Even after giving away more than $28 billion in charity till now, his net worth is at $79.3 billion just ahead of Mexican Carlos Slim. A rising Microsoft stock price has helped to move back to the top position.

Reader Mark Hoefle, put it this way: “Says the man with a carbon foot-print larger than most small cities. 66,0000 square foot house, $40M private jet. Vacations on $330M private yacht.”

Isn’t hypocrisy wonderful?

Even more interesting, is that at the same time, Lonnie Shekhtman, Staff Writer @csmonitor.com/Science, headlined today’s article, “Antarctica is actually gaining ice, says NASA. Is global warming over?”

 “Not quite, scientists say. But new study results show the fallibility of current climate change measuring tools and challenges current theories about the causes of sea level rise.

“A new NASA study found that Antarctica has been adding more ice than it's been losing, challenging other research, including that of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that concludes that Earth’s southern continent is losing land ice overall. 

“In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology on Friday, researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the engineering firm Sigma Space Corporation offer a new analysis of satellite data that show a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 in the Antarctic ice sheet. 

“That gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.” 

So, what we have here is data that flies in the face of climate-change advocates, many of which are simply involved for the money flowing from countless sources. Such as Bill Gates, who apparently doesn’t mind being fleeced by scientists cooking the data they distribute. But, in his case, it really doesn’t matter, because Microsoft will keep providing him more bucks to waste, while his huge donations make great tax write-offs, even if the planet freezes.   

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife. 

Renowned economist Dr. Arthur Laffer, appeared on the Fox News Business channel this morning, discussing his thoughts regarding the current state of the economy. Being  a strong proponent of “supply-side” economic theory, he naturally found significant fault with the current administration’s stifling tax policies, over-regulation and interference in business in general.  

Blaming bloated government directly for what he suggested was a stagnant past seven years economy-wise, he seemed to treat the Republicans retaking the White House 2016 as a forgone conclusion. Implying that pent up public frustration would significantly reflect itself at the polls. 

His perfunctory dismissal of any chance of a Democrat election victory led to one of the show hosts asking what he thought about Bill’s wife’s hopes for a win. 

At that point, Dr. Laffer explained that he considered himself a personal friend of Bill’s wife, knowing her quite well by his estimation. He further emphasized that he liked her very much, thought she was bright, articulate and highly regarded by him. However, regardless of personal feelings, he believes her ideas are significantly outdated, are unrealistic and that’s she’s living in a world that’s hasn’t existed since the 1990’s. And, as a result, in his opinion, she hasn’t a prayer of electability.    

At the same time, adding fuel to the unelectability fire, according to The Hill: “Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials were warned against saying that an anti-Muslim video contributed to the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a new email released on Friday reveals. The warning came from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, Libya, on Sept. 14, 2012, three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in which four Americans were killed.”   

Leading to the ongoing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you reading this?  

That's it for today folks.

Adios